ECB All Stars Cricket: Getting Young Children Into the Game
Cricket has been woven into British community life for centuries, played on village greens from Cornwall to Caithness, in urban parks and county grounds alike. Yet for many parents, introducing a young child to the sport can feel daunting. Where do you start? What are the rules? How do you find a local club that welcomes complete beginners? The England and Wales Cricket Board’s All Stars Cricket programme answers many of these questions directly, offering a structured, fun, and genuinely accessible entry point for children aged five to eight. This article covers everything you need to know about the programme, the basics of cricket for newcomers, and how to use it as a springboard into a lifelong love of the game.
What Is ECB All Stars Cricket?
All Stars Cricket is the England and Wales Cricket Board’s flagship participation programme for young children. Launched nationally in 2017, it targets boys and girls aged five to eight and is delivered through affiliated cricket clubs across England and Wales. By 2023, more than 700,000 children had taken part since the programme’s inception, making it one of the most successful grassroots sports initiatives in the United Kingdom.
The programme runs each summer, typically from May through to August, with sessions lasting around 45 minutes to an hour. Each child who signs up receives a personalised kit bag containing a bat, ball, wickets, and a backpack — all branded and kept by the child to use at home and encourage continued play outside of the sessions. This tangible take-home element is a deliberate design choice: the ECB’s own research showed that children who had equipment at home were significantly more likely to remain engaged with cricket beyond the initial programme.
Sessions are delivered by trained local volunteers and coaches at ECB-registered cricket clubs. The coaching is designed to be activity-led rather than technique-heavy at this age, prioritising movement, confidence, and enjoyment over perfecting a cover drive. Children rotate through a series of games and drills that introduce core skills — batting, bowling, fielding, and catching — in a low-pressure, high-energy environment.
Why Structured Introduction Programmes Matter for Young Players
One of the most common barriers to children taking up cricket in the UK is the perceived complexity of the game. Cricket has a reputation, not entirely unfounded, for being difficult to understand. The Laws of Cricket, maintained by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, run to dozens of pages and cover scenarios from the obscure to the highly technical. For a five-year-old picking up a bat for the first time, none of that matters — but many parents assume they need to understand it all before they can support their child.
Programmes like All Stars Cricket strip the game back to its essentials: hit the ball, run between the wickets, try to get the batter out. The fundamental joy of cricket — the contest between bat and ball — is instantly accessible even to very young children, and the ECB has been deliberate about building the programme around that core experience.
Research by Sport England, which part-funds the ECB’s participation strategy through its “Uniting the Movement” framework, consistently shows that positive early experiences in sport are the strongest predictor of long-term participation. Getting the first experience right matters enormously, and All Stars Cricket is specifically designed with this in mind.
Understanding the Basic Rules of Cricket for Beginners
Before your child starts attending sessions, or if you want to understand what they are learning, a basic grounding in cricket’s rules is genuinely useful. The full Laws of Cricket are overseen by the MCC, but for a beginner’s context, the essentials are straightforward.
The Object of the Game
Cricket is played between two teams of eleven players. One team bats while the other bowls and fields. The batting team tries to score as many runs as possible. The fielding team tries to dismiss the batters and limit the runs scored. When all eligible batters are dismissed, the teams swap roles. The team that scores the most runs wins.
How Runs Are Scored
Runs are scored primarily by the two batters at the crease running between the wickets after the ball is hit. Each completed run scores one point. If the ball reaches the boundary rope having bounced or rolled, the batting team automatically scores four runs. If the ball clears the boundary rope without touching the ground — a six — the batting team scores six runs. Additional runs can also be scored through extras: wides, no-balls, byes, and leg byes, which are penalties applied when the bowling or fielding side makes specific errors.
How a Batter Is Dismissed
There are ten ways a batter can be dismissed under the Laws of Cricket, but in practice, beginners need only understand the most common five:
- Bowled: The bowled ball hits the stumps directly and dislodges the bails.
- Caught: A fielder catches the ball before it touches the ground after the batter has hit it.
- LBW (Leg Before Wicket): The ball strikes the batter’s body — usually the pad — when it would otherwise have hit the stumps, provided the ball did not pitch outside the leg stump.
- Run Out: A fielder breaks the stumps with the ball while a batter is outside their crease attempting a run.
- Stumped: The wicketkeeper breaks the stumps while the batter is out of their crease and not attempting a run.
The Structure of an Innings
An innings ends when ten of the eleven batters have been dismissed (two batters must always be at the crease, so the innings ends at ten wickets rather than eleven). In shorter formats and junior cricket, innings are often limited by overs — a set number of six-ball sequences — rather than by wickets alone.
How to Bat: Fundamentals for Young Beginners
All Stars Cricket sessions introduce batting in a simplified, high-participation format, but understanding the basics helps parents support their children at home.
The Grip
For a right-handed batter, the top hand (left) provides control and the bottom hand (right) provides power. Both hands should be together in the middle of the bat handle, with the V shapes formed by the thumb and index finger of each hand aligned down the back of the bat. Left-handed batters reverse this. The grip should be firm but not tense — a common coaching cue used across ECB programmes is to hold the bat as if you are holding a small bird: tight enough that it cannot escape, loose enough that you do not crush it.
The Stance
A good batting stance places the feet shoulder-width apart, side-on to the bowler, with the weight evenly distributed. The bat rests lightly on the ground beside the back foot. The head should be upright, with the eyes level — this is crucial for judging the line and length of the ball accurately. Young children naturally adapt their stance over time; at the All Stars age range, the key is simply that they feel balanced and comfortable.
Watching the Ball
The single most important batting skill for any beginner of any age is watching the ball closely from the moment it leaves the bowler’s hand. This sounds obvious but is surprisingly difficult under pressure. In All Stars sessions, coaches use a range of drills specifically designed to build this habit early.
Playing Shots
Junior cricket at this age focuses on basic hitting rather than formal shot technique. The straight drive — hitting the ball back down the pitch — and the pull shot — hitting a short ball to the on-side — are the two that naturally emerge first. Coaches at All Stars level do not over-coach technique; the priority is confidence and contact.
How to Bowl: An Introduction for Young Players
Bowling is the aspect of cricket that most distinguishes it from other bat-and-ball sports, and for many children, it becomes the element they most enjoy.
The Run-Up
Young bowlers need to develop a consistent, comfortable run-up. At the All Stars age, this is kept short — often just three or four paces — to prioritise accuracy and balance over pace. The run-up should be straight, leading directly to the bowling crease.
The Bowling Action
ECB coaching guidelines emphasise a side-on or front-on action as appropriate to the child’s natural movement pattern. The key coaching points for beginners are: a high front arm to help achieve a high delivery point, a strong front leg landing to provide a stable base, and a full follow-through to prevent injury and maximise consistency. The Laws of Cricket specify that the bowling arm must be straight at the point of delivery — a bent arm that straightens constitutes an illegal delivery, called a throw or chuck — but at junior development level, coaches focus on building natural, repeatable actions rather than policing this strictly.
Line and Length
The two fundamental targets for any bowler are line (how far to the left or right of the stumps the ball pitches) and length (how far down the pitch the ball lands). A good length delivery lands roughly four to six metres from the batter, forcing them to make a decision about whether to play forward or back. Young bowlers are encouraged simply to aim at the stumps and build consistency before worrying about strategy.
Village Cricket: The Heart of the English Game
All Stars Cricket is explicitly designed as a gateway to club cricket, and in England and Wales, club cricket most often means village cricket. The Village Cricket World Cup, run by the Club Cricket Conference, is one of the most celebrated grassroots sporting events in England. Villages from Hambledon in Hampshire — historically considered the birthplace of cricket as an organised sport — to remote communities in the Yorkshire Dales field competitive sides every summer weekend.
Village cricket clubs are typically affiliated to their county cricket board, which in turn is affiliated to the ECB. This structure means that a child who begins their cricket journey at an All Stars session at their local village club can, in principle, progress through age-group county cricket all the way to professional cricket. The pathway is formalised, funded, and well-signposted.
The atmosphere at village cricket is one of the game’s great pleasures. A Saturday afternoon match on a traditional ground, with a tea interval of sandwiches and cake prepared by club volunteers, represents something genuinely distinctive about English sporting culture. Many families find that watching a village game together — long before their child is old enough to play — is a natural and enjoyable introduction to the sport.
Moving Forward
Once you have the fundamentals in place, the possibilities open up considerably. The UK offers fantastic opportunities for anyone interested in this hobby, and with the right foundation you will be well placed to make the most of them.